The present invention relates to post print finishing in which printed sheets are bound end to end using imaging material to form a continuous sheet.
Current devices and methods for printing and binding media sheets involve printing the desired document on a plurality of media sheets, assembling the media sheets into a stack, and separately stapling, clamping, gluing and/or sewing the stack. In addition to imaging material used to print the document, each of these binding methods require separate binding materials, increasing the cost and complexity of binding. Techniques for binding media sheets using imaging material are known in the art. These techniques generally involve applying imaging material such as toner to defined binding regions on multiple sheets, assembling the media sheets into a stack, and reactivating the imaging material via fusing or other methods, causing the media sheets to adhere to one another.
Presently, printed banners and other long printed materials are printed on a continuous length of paper or other print media using a plotter or printing press, or by manually assembling and binding together a series of single sheets. In the case of continuous sheet printing, rolls of paper and roll supply devices are necessary. Manually assembling and binding single sheets is, of course, labor intensive and therefore expensive. It would be desirable, as an alternative to conventional continuous sheet printing techniques, to use single sheet printing to automatically produce continuous sheets of printed materials.
The present invention is directed to the use of imaging material binding techniques to simulate continuous sheet printing with single sheets of print media. Accordingly, in one exemplary embodiment of the invention imaging material is applied to a binding region along the trailing edge of a first sheet. The trailing edge of the first sheet and the leading edge of a following second sheet are overlapped and the imaging material is activated to bind the sheets together. This process may be repeated for successive sheets to form one continuous sheet. The invention may be implemented, for example, in a stand alone appliance used in conjunction with a conventional single sheet printer, as an integrated printing device, or through a computer readable medium used to control operations in one or both of these devices.